theeconomiccollapseblog.com / By Michael Snyder, on September 4th, 2017

On Monday, Hurricane Irma strengthened into a category 4 hurricane, and some meteorologists are projecting that it will eventually become a category 5 storm before it eventually makes landfall in the United States. And since a “category 6” has not been created yet, category 5 is as high as the scale goes at the moment. Over the past couple of days, the track of the storm has shifted “a lot further to the west”, and at this point it appears that Miami is the most likely to take the full force of the hurricane. But as we have seen, trying to forecast the behavior of hurricanes is not an exact science. Irma may never become a category 5 storm, and it may never hit the U.S. at all. Or it may zip past Florida to the south and end up making landfall in the Gulf of Mexico. The truth is that we just don’t know.

On Monday afternoon, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for every county in Florida in anticipation of Irma. A state of emergency was also declared in Puerto Rico earlier in the day.

Another scenario still on the table is that Irma curve northward and miss the East Coast entirely. This would still generate large surf and rip currents along the East Coast. Howev